My SI Stash #93 - RWBY - The Pen and the Sword by TwoChimpsWithoutOne (RWBY)

-More SI RWBY fics~ This one's a lil bit slow but it does pay off! The suspense is over the roof in this one too!

Sypnosis: -For the Record- Surviving a plane crash? Not enough. Being hunted by super predators? Not even close. Hopping worlds? Why not? I'll see that, and raise getting recruited by a woman who fashions herself a goddess. OC/I

Rated: T

Words: 736K

Posted on: https://m.fanfiction.net/s/12027667/1/ (TwoChimpsWithoutOne)

PS: If you're not able to copy/paste the link, you have everything in here to find it, by simply searching the author and the story title. It sucks that you can't copy links on mobile (´ー｀)

-I'll be putting the chapter ones of all the fanfics mentioned, to give you guys a sample if you wan't more please do go to the website and support the author! (And maybe even convince them to start uploading chapters in here as well!)

Chapter 0-1

Before you panic and hit the back button after seeing the 'OC/I' tag, I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt and follow along for a bit. I plan to go a bit off the norm for this one, and a plan for the whole ride through.

Prologue

Telekinesis was defined as the manipulation of objects with the mind. Pyrokinesis was the ability to create and manipulate fire. Illusions, the ability to bend light and warp sound to suit one's desires. Once, this was considered the stuff of fiction, and as such, no one believed it was possible, or even believed in the nigh illimitable possibilities such skills would allow. Nebo Aldric, however, had learned much, much differently during his time in this new world. Awakening his abilities and being exposed to many others had been trials in and of themselves, to say nothing of the training it took to hone his own to the degree he did, and in the time he'd had to do it, too, but the result was nothing short of fantastic. Everything he lacked in strength, he made up for in skill. Creativity. Lateral thinking.

Unfortunately for Aldric, as he watched a small flying metal deathtrap of a locker blast through the air under its own power, he wasn't entirely certain if his skill would measure up. Certainly, he thought, he was powerful, but there was a definite hierarchy in this world, and no matter what anyone said, experience ensured that even now he wasn't entirely certain of his position in the pecking order, at the moment. Perhaps if he'd had more time, time for his body to adapt, for his powers to age, for him to develop a complete understanding and a far lesser fear of them, things would have been different, but he'd hardly had two years to go from Clark Kent to Superman. He'd had to learn fast, and sacrifices thusly had to be made.

The dark-haired man watched silently as the locker hurtled through the sky, containing within it a person who, very soon, would gain the ability to change the world through sheer convenience of existing. Sure, he'd done a lot of things these last eighteen months, some overt and some not quite as, some stupid, some and intelligent, but this had been the first change he'd gone out of his way to make.

Well... Thought Aldric, as he wiped through his shaggy hair, a hand that reflected the moon above with a metallic sheen. That's you taken care of.

He turned up to Beacon Tower, the enormous building that loomed above him and likely was the man-made roof of the world.

But how do I take care of you? He thought, as he watched a bright flare of red-orange light begin to raise through the building, hurtling upwards, towards the office of the academy's likely deceased headmaster. Placing his hands in the pockets of his cassock, Aldric casually strolled towards the base of the tower, humming whatever it was that struck his fancy as he made his way inside, very well aware that he was likely, and literally, marching to his death.

I guess I'll just have to wing it. He thought, as he entered the abandoned, trashed tower.

The tower's lobby looked like a tornado had gone through it, with large scorch marks blackening the area around the elevator behind the main receptionist's desk. To his left and right were the waiting areas, the televisions blank and the couches overturned. He thought he heard running water, but he couldn't see any broken fountains, or anything the like. Ignoring most of the devastation, Aldric entered the trashed elevator. In the center of the floor was a large, boulder-sized hole, warped and bent as if it had been melted. Looking up in the cramped space showed a similar hole in the lift's ceiling.

Oh yeah... Lady in red came through here. Thought the teen, as he removed his right hand from his coat and held it out in front of him, his gray palm facing the ground.

He snorted. "Going up..." And with a brief frown, the elevator began the long ascent. A loud, horrendous grinding noise accompanied the trip, sparks flying in all directions.

It took him two minutes to make it to the top, and after forcing the door to the headmaster's office open, he found his goal simply standing there, waiting for him, a smug smirk pasted across her face, her deep orange eyes glowing with energy, and her raven hair falling in thick curls over her shoulders. Replacing his hand in his coat, the dark-haired fighter strolled inside.

"Hey, Hot Stuff." Said Aldric, "am I too late?"

She regarded him with a curious glance, "I must admit, I expected to see the other one." The young woman said, as she smoothed out a wrinkle in her tight, form-fitting red dress.

"I gave her the night off." Said Aldric, as, outside, a massive, demonic dragon with a black visage and a pale white exoskeleton detached from the building and took off, its enormous wings creating loud gale-force gusts of wind with every beat, as it circled the tower. "Like your pet. Always wanted a dragon."

"What do you, of all people, expect to accomplish by coming here?" The woman taunted, "it is pointless. We've won. I have the Fall Maiden's abilities... Her power. Even you cannot stand to me." She smirked.

Aldric frowned, and shrugged his shoulders, leaning up against the wall as he did so. "You know... That's one thing I've noticed time and time again, during my brief tenure here. You all operate on the idea that power is everything. The strong survive, the weak die out. You are correct in thinking that you have more power than me - hell, right now you probably have more power than I ever will..." A pause, "unless I survive, then I'll have time to see how big that bonfire is, but I digress.

"There's one thing you guys don't quite understand... One thing that would have gotten the red-head killed, had I let her come up here. The best counter for raw power, is skill." He said, as his blue eyes slowly darkened to a deep, dark onyx. "You treat science and aura as two different subjects. Mutually exclusive. Despite having all of the tools necessary to prove that wrong six ways from Sunday." He lifted his metallic fist, inspecting it with a blank expression.

"I was blessed, when I figured out what my semblance was. I was blessed even more when the good witch of the south came out of the woodwork and taught me some tricks. Very powerful, indeed." He lowered his hand to the zipper on his overcoat, and began dragging it upwards, unfastening his coat and letting it fall around his ankles. "And yes, I am stalling." He added, as he shoved off from the wall and took a few steps towards the raven-haired woman. "From what I understand, I'm about to fight someone who got her powers right from God." He said, stretching his arms out.

The woman's smirk didn't falter, but he did notice, just faintly, how it drew away from her eyes. "You could leave, you know. Few would know. Fewer still would fault you."

"You kidding?" He chuckled, "I would. She would... Probably." Aldric countered, running a gray, metallic hand through his shoulder-length hair. "I never leave a job half done. Method acting, Shalashaska, and all that. Besides, you may be more powerful than me... May have always been... May always will be. We both know the biggest thing working against me was always time... But what you have, in overwhelming power, you lack in skill. Your body is only used to half of the power you currently possess, and even then, it's a stretch.

"Me, however, I've bled, sweat, and worked for everything I can do, and I'll let you in on a secret... As I said before..." He said, as the dust on the ground, and the bits of metal from the destroyed elevator, all began to levitate around him, soon swirling around him as if orbiting his body. "The greatest counter for strength, is skill." Some of the items began to disintegrate, flaking away like embers from a fire. "All the power in the universe cannot help you if you cannot hit the man you want to kill.

"So tell me... You who fashion yourself a goddess." Said Aldric, as he cracked his gray, sheening knuckles, and crouched down low into a fighting stance, as a wide grin began to grow across his face.

"Do you bleed?"

The woman's eyes narrowed, and she began to levitate, as the very air around her distorted from the sheer heat she was generating. Her eyes were covered in massive auras of fire, their shape reminiscent of the wings of a butterfly. The ground underneath them, and the air around them, shimmered and shook as the two combatants pulled out all of the stops, and drew all of their strength, one to be rid of a pest as fast as possible, and one in the hopes that he may, just may, be able to survive this whole ordeal. All across the academy, and even down in the kingdom, many paused a moment and turned their heads to Beacon Tower, as the Fall Maiden, and Beacon's Master, drew out everything they had. A flaming bonfire versus a napalm campfire, their combined energies were enough such that even civilians, with little aura to speak of, could feel something was off. Aldric felt the weight of the raven-haired Fall Maiden's power crushing him, but he didn't let his grin falter, as he rang the bell.

"You will." And the two launched at each other.

Eighteen months previous.

Somehow, over the all-penetrating white noise of constant conversation, phone calls, text messages, and TSA announcements, the snoring of a teenaged boy could be heard. Snoozing on a bench, with his head hanging over the back, a dark-haired, pale-skinned teen was surrounded by luggage and a messenger's bag, filled to the bursting with wires, sensitive electronics, and a pillow, resting on his lap. The teen had so many possessions surrounding him that he took over the entire bench, and attracted more than one curious eye, though few truly thought that everything he surrounded himself with was his - he was so thin and lanky, and his clothes so baggy, that he had the general appearance of a stick, barely even able to hold up the bag hanging from his neck.

The teen was awoken suddenly by a kick to his left foot, his head snapped up and his glasses were sent askew as he tried to shake the sleep from behind his half-lidded eyes.

"I didn't do it." Drawled the teen, through a yawn as he stretched both of his arms. "Unless I did. Then I did it." He paused, "what did or didn't I do?" He looked up to the figure that had awoken him, being greeted by the visage of his short, though thickly built father, whose dark, shoulder-length, meticulously brushed hair absorbed all of the sunlight that would have otherwise thrown him into deep, detail-masking shadows.

"Just a few more connectors, Nebo." The teen's father responded, a sympathetic look in his deep gray eyes.

"I think my jet-lag is jet lagged." Said the teen, who hand-brushed his unkempt, brown hair back behind his ears, and readjusted his glasses. "So... Started in Germany, brief layover in south wherever... Connector to bum-squat whatever'sville... Where the hell are we?" Nebo rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and stood up, his messenger's bag swinging heavily from its strap around his neck.

"Somewhere where people speak better English than the folks back home." Said Nebo's father, as the two shared a grin.

Nebo adjusted the fit on his light gray hoodie, before dropping both hands into its pockets. "'Bout to board?" He turned to his rear, where the bright blue sky beat down upon the small passenger jet sitting right outside. "Thing looks small... Damn it, we're not getting far, are we?"

"Well, far enough that we're going over the ocean, after we get on."

"Hm..." Nebo yawned again. "Ergh... 'Get on the plane, get on the plane... Fuck you, I'm getting in the plane!" Nebo grinned a one-sided grin.

There was a brief chime in the intercom above them, before a voice spoke. "Now beginning pre-boarding for Continental Flight Six, Three, Six. All passengers please be ready..." Her voice was quickly drowned out by the teen, who chuckled lightly.

"Now, what does it mean to pre-board?" He quoted again, causing his father to roll his eyes as the two of them unplugged their various electronics and grabbed their luggage. "To get on, before you get on!?" Nebo laughed.

"Are you done?"

"Maybe." Said Nebo, as the two weaved through the aisles of chairs and got in line as dictated by their tickets, soon being flanked on their front and back by dozens of people. "Wanna sit by the wings." He added, through another yawn. "See, it's uh, more structurally sound, there." He explained, "middle of the plane has to support the weight of the wings, and all that."

"Oh, I thought it was to support your fat ass, kiddo." Said Nebo's father, before a brief slap on the back.

"Nah, we both know who's packing on the pounds, pop." Said Nebo, as the thick line began to move.

"Gonna try and take a nap when we get in, see if I can't beat the lag." Nebo said, as he swung a backpack over his shoulders and let it rest on the top of his messenger's bag.

Three hours later, well after Nebo had plugged his headphones into his tablet and let whatever movies he had downloaded start playing, he awoke to the feeling of violent, quick shakes and quakes. The entire airplane was shaking around him, causing him to slowly rouse from his unconscious state, and to be greeted by the sight of a bombastic fight between the reds and blues of the appropriately named Red vs Blue.

Nebo grunted lowly, catching the attention of his father, who was reading a book on his phone. "Turbulence?" Nebo inquired, not even taking his earbud out. His father nodded, not even looking up from his book. "Rough shit..." Groaned the teen, who shut his eyes again. "If we crash, don't die without me, fat man."

"Fat man, or bat man? Besides, you know as well as I do..." Said his father, though the teen was already falling asleep again by the time he spoke. "Now is not the time for dying. That comes later."

"Fuck you... Fat Batman." Whispered the snoozing teen, which caused his father to grin.

Back and forth with slow, wide swings, and the sound of cloth clenching and straining. In his half asleep state, Nebo smiled, wondering if he were on the porch swing again. Though something felt off about the experience, as if he were heavier and pressing down against the swing more, he didn't mind too much, he liked the feeling of sinking into the cushions. Though the tight, compressed feeling on his chest, as if there were a bundle of rope, or a seatbelt fastened too tightly, he could do without.

He heard something begin ringing, and waved his hand idly to his side, muttering something about just needing a few more minutes. The odd thing, however, was that he wasn't hitting the phone he usually laid next to his head. Much the opposite, his arm seemed to be heavier than his body, it took more effort to bring it back down, towards his chest, than it took to lift up and wave around. Odd.

Status report. All engines ago. Prepare wake up. Preparing to wake up, captain! Wake up. Waking up, captain! Groggily thought the sleeper, who opened his dark, blue-gray eyes and blinked out the sleep. His vision was blurry and the back of his head hurt as he exposed his eyes to the light, and all of the browns, greens and reds of the environment around him.

Oh... Damn it, did I fall off of the swing? Thought Nebo, as he clenched his eyes tightly, and laboriously lifted his hand to wipe at them. His hand came away bloody, perplexing the teen, who blinked a few times as he stared at his bloody hand, still swinging back and forth as he did so. That's weird... Did I get into a fight, then? He wondered, no... There aren't any raised voices, or the smell of Rick pissing his pants... Come to think about it, it smells weird. He inhaled deeply through his nose, the act briefly intensifying all of the blurry colors around him as he took in the earthy smells of nature. Upon exhaling, everything came into a much sharper focus, and it came to his attention that the sky looked an awful lot like a forest's ground, thick with grass and vegetation.

Hm... Do Nanna and Poppy have a tire swing? He blinked again, the ringing in his head slowly fading away. Wait... I wasn't at their house... I was in Germany. Oktoberfest, translating for my Dad. Where... He groaned, and tried to turn to his side, when he realized that gravity was actively pulling him to the sky.

He blinked once, his heart slowing down and leaving a slightly empty, pained feeling in his chest as he came to a realization.

"Oh... Fuck no..." Groaned the teen, as he turned his dark-eyed gaze down to his chest, where he was pressing tightly against the hastily redone straps and belts of the seat from the airplane. "Oh... My god..." He breathed, turning his head as far around as he could go, and finding that he his chair, and the metal bits, wires, and beams that had secured it to the plane, was tangled up in a tree, multiple dozens of feet above the ground, of which he was facing, chest-first.

"Oh..." His breaths were coming faster, as he lifted his head and saw, directly in front of him, a massive path of destruction carved out of the dense, thick forest that surrounded him.

Some trees were on fire, some patches of grass were scorched, the ground was torn apart in a massive fissure, trees were smashed to pieces and ripped from the dirt, and in the distance, some few hundred meters away, was the massive, deceptively massive wreckage.

"Oh!..." He could barely even speak, let alone articulate anything more than sheer awe, as, near the crash site, there was a brief, but loud explosion as one of the plane's turbines went up, the shockwave powerful enough to shake the teen, even as far away as he was.

"Oh... Sssssssssshit!" Nebo swallowed thickly, his first instinct - and indeed, his first action - being to go for the buckles on his seatbelt, but he forced himself to pause and think, to calm down. If he undid his restraints now, all he would succeed in doing is falling several dozen feet to the ground, crack his skull open, break a few rips, and likely do some lasting damage that couldn't be properly treated for however long it took the rescue crew to show up.

Rapidly glancing around, Nebo reached upwards and firmly grasped the thick branch from which he and his seat were hanging. He pulled once, twice, and after satisfying himself that the branch that was already supporting his weight, could continue to do so, he reached down with his free hand and grasped at the seatbelt. With one thick swallow through a bone-dry throat, Nebo pulled at the belt and undid his restraint. Instantly he swung forward a few feet as he was now being held up only by his slightly bloody arm. With a yelp of fear, Nebo grabbed at the branch with his other hand, and forced himself to stop swinging, as he came face to face with the fact that he hadn't thought this far ahead.

His head snapped to his left, where he saw the trunk of the tree he was hanging from. It was thick, at least the circumference of an average tire, meaning he could wrap himself around it and slide down. The phrase 'if need be' did snap to his mind, but the need did be, as this was literally a life or death, holy shit he was in a plane crash and could die if he didn't start climbing for his life right now, situation.

"Well..." He said, to no one in particular, as he started swinging from side to side, throwing one arm out and carefully sliding along the branch, towards the trunk. "Think of this this way, Aldric... Get picked up by the rescue team..." He grunted, passing by his life-saving chair as he swung across the branch. "Have dad sue the airlines... Get two big, fat, massive settlements - one for you and him." He grunted again, getting closer to the thick trunk, as the sounds of birds flying overhead passed through his ears. "And have more money than all of your friends combined." He reached the trunk, and found that there was a smaller, thinner branch, just a few feet below him. Gingerly, he placed a foot on this branch, and found that it could just support his weight. "Maybe take Rick out to Momocon... Or fly out to Austin, go to RTX...

"Nah, too fuckin' hot. Go to Comic Con. CJ's always wanted to go to that... Few hundred K, maybe a million if you're lucky... You could bring him." He inhaled and exhaled rapidly, before letting go with one hand, a brief cry of fear escaping his lungs as now all of his weight was on one leg on a thin branch, and one over-strained arm with rivulets of blood streaming down from multiple lacerations and bruises. "And, now you get to shut dad up. All that time, watchin' the discovery channel..." He grunted loudly, swinging around and gripping the tree trunk with his free arm, wrapping it around and holding on as tight as he could. "Man vs Wild... Survivorman... Mythbusters... How it's made... Uh... Shit... Pawnstars? I dunno. Fuck." He said, slowly snaking his next arm around the tree.

"Internet, too. Find my luggage, tablet's got one of those... Emergency apps, on it. And a first aid manual. Is it really paranoia if it actually fucking happens?" He asked himself, as he slowly, with a terrified clench in his gut, began shinnying down the tree, a few inches at a time, smearing his cargo pants and his dark shirt with the sap and the dew that covered the dark brown bark.

"Of course..." He groaned, "that's if your fuckin' thing didn't get smashed... But it may work..." He swallowed through his dry throat, "I was sitting next to the wings, after all, and look at my ass! I'm alive!" He laughed, "survived... A fucking... Plane crash. In the middle of a jungle..." He slid further down the tree. "Where there could be lions... Tigers... Polar bears... Smoke monsters... Plot twists and questions you won't understand even after binging it all in a week." He let all of the air in his lungs go in one long, hysteric laugh as he unintentionally slid down a few feet, coming to a halt when he hooked his right leg on a branch. "Ah... Goddamn it... Um... Okay... Look down."

He looked over his shoulder, and saw that he'd made more progress than he'd initially thought, the ground was only a few feet away, now. In any other situation, he'd be willing to take the risk and just jump it, but he didn't know how bad his injuries were, so he played it safe and kept sliding.

"What would Indiana Jones do?..." He asked himself, "er... Actually, fuck that. What would Nathan Drake do? Dude's survived crazier stuff than this." He laughed to himself, as he felt his butt hit solid ground.

"Oh, thank sweet god!" The teen cried, as he disengaged from the tree and fell onto his back. "Ha! Take that, death! Fuck you!" He said, squinting his eyes. Was that his chair? Was it getting - "Shit!" Nebo rolled to the side, his chair slamming into the ground where his chest had been just a few moments earlier.

"Ha! Haha... Whew. Gotta try harder than that, asshole." He said, from his position on his hands and knees. "Nathan Drake... Nathan Drake..." He shook his head. "Alright... Go to the crash sight, stay away from the engines... Look for survivors, find the fuselage, the black box, any radios, stuff like that." He nodded once, "you can do this."

It took him five minutes to huff and puff his way to the crash sight. The lanky teen was left a sweat-slick, wheezing wreck by the time he reached it and fell to his knees. The plane's engines had long since exploded, and though the fires were intense, they hadn't spread to the fuselage, meaning that the inside was, for all intents and purposes, safe. On the other hand, however, both wings had been sheered off and blown to pieces by the impact and subsequent explosions, and Nebo gagged and nearly vomited when he noticed body parts strewn about the area. What he noticed upon forcing himself back onto his aching feet, however, was a severe, terrifying lack of voices. There was no screaming, no panicking, no cries for help or dashing rogues taking charge and coordinating recovery efforts, just an eerie silence broken only by the sounds of roaring fires and smoldering debris.

Breathing deeply, Nebo shook his head. "HELLO?!" He screamed out, his loud, hoarse voice bellowing over the noise of the fires.

He received no answer.

"HEEEEEEEEEEELP!"

Still nothing.

Nebo's shoulders slumped forward, but he fought the urge to collapse again. If he stopped moving now, it would only become all the more difficult to get moving again. Clenching his jaw, Nebo powered through the despair by reasoning that, he had been torn from the plane and survived, so someone else had to have, as well. He stomped heavily towards the wrecked, torn apart, and partially scorched fuselage. He put out a few of the smaller fires he came across by kicking dirt over them, and when he made it to the fuselage, he took one look inside and had to back out again, this time succumbing to the urge to vomit, as the very first thing his eyes had beheld him was the bode of some poor woman, whose neck was most certainly not supposed to bend that way, and who had to have been a chain smoker since the age of two, given the enormous, gaping, bloody hole in her throat.

After emptying his stomach through his mouth, Nebo stood again, holding his blood-stained, sweat-slick head, which still felt hot to the touch despite it all. The teen steeled himself, and entered the fuselage again, now at least having the wherewithall to ascertain that he was entering from the rear of the plane, and it was tilted on its side, such that he didn't have to climb over the cargo hold in the belly to get to the passenger's section, though that also meant the tail, and however much had been taken with it, was unaccounted for. Inside the gray, shadowy fuselage were dozens of bodies, none of them moving an inch even as he tried calling out again into the plane. Nebo thought he remembered that the plane hadn't been filled to capacity when he'd boarded, which meant the fact that there were empty seats meant nothing, and were perhaps a red herring, given the amount of seats with bodies still in them.

Six... D. Thought Nebo, as he forced himself to step over the ruined aisles and walk past the dead people, Six D... Six D. Six D, six D, six D... Row six, Aisle D. Aisle six, row D... God damn it. He reached the row and found what he was looking for: The window seat, which had been torn out after the wing had been torn off, and the seat next to it, which was completely empty.

His father was somewhere out there.

Nebo looked up to the big, gaping hole in the airplane, right in front of him. Beyond the ripped apart, scorched environment around him, it was clear he had crash landed far from any kind of civilization, there were trees and mountains for as far out as he could see, stretching for dozens of kilometers in all directions, and it didn't help that the air was being choked by the smoke and smoldering bits of wreckage. Nebo shook his head, and stooped forward, reaching under the seat that he had, before the crash, been sitting behind. Words failed to describe the tidal wave of relief he felt when his bloody hand latched onto the familiar strap of his messenger's bag. He yanked it out from under the chair, but didn't bother checking anything in it as he slung it around his shoulder, nor did he bother checking the baggage compartment above him for his bookbag. His messenger's bag had the important, tech bits that he might be able to actually get a use out of, whereas the bookbag had books and a few emergency pairs of clothes.

Okay... Pilot's cabin. Find a radio, or an emergency transponder, or something... Thought the stranded teen, as he turned to the front of the plane and started walking, a determined scowl on his blood-dripping, sweat-slicked face.

-For the Record-

"Well... Hello there!" Drawled a deep, rumbly southern accented voice, with a light inflection on it so as to try and sound somewhat positive, or even friendly, as a large figure slowly backed away from the camera and revealed himself to be a lean male, of seventeen to nineteen years. The man sat down on a chair that looked like it had been ripped out of an airplane, and clapped his hands on his lap.

"So... Uh... I guess I'll call this... 'For the Record'... Aaaaaaas you can tell..." The man spoke, his eyes wide and shining with equal parts terror, hysteria, and disbelief. "I'm alive!" The cackling of a fire and the warm orange light bathed his features as the fire in front of him grew in size, though the man seemed unconcerned, likely because he had set the fire himself. "But, you're watching this. Probably not surprising, and all that... So, let me explain.

"I'm... Nebo Aldric. I know, I know." He cut himself off, waving his hand and nodding a few times. "Really odd name for some white kid from Connecticut, but my Ma was bible-belt, born and raised, and the fat man..." He paused, a pensive, almost remorseful look flashing across his face as he frowned, before he forced himself to continue. "My dad... Sorry, inside joke. My dad was a big softy with a bigger beer belly. She wanted a bible name, and, lucky me, I got Nebo. Short for Nebuchadnezzar... I think. My buddies just call me Aldric... Or Morpheus, if they're feeling particularly vindictive, but I digress." He shook his head again, cleared his throat, and sighed deeply.

"I am a survivor of International Flight, Six Three Six. Unfortunately, I have reason to believe, at the moment, that I may be the only survivor, as the plane's been smoldering since high noon and no one else has come stumbling over here." He said, indicating the dark night sky that surrounded him.

"Now... I woke up about... Eight or nine hours ago. Had to shinny down a friggin' tree to safety, and then this thing..." He patted the chair he sat upon. "This magical, evil fucking thing, tried to kill me right after it finished saving me. After I woke up, I came to the crash sight, but everyone I found was dead..." He paused, "yeah... Dead." He nodded to himself, preceding another long sigh. "I picked up the emergency supplies from the pilot's cabin... Got the radio, some flares, all that jazz. I tried the radio, and though it turns on, I just got snake city. Nothin' but hisssssss." He drawled out.

"So... Uh, I currently have no way to charge the radio's battery, so I'm only going to turn it on twice a day - once at high noon, once before I turn in for the night. But, the fuselage of the plane is... Mostly intact... Save for a few..." He waved to his front, indicating a plane that wasn't in view of the camera. "Obvious exceptions. Here."

Aldric leaned forward and picked up the camera, turning it around to face the plane, which was barely lit up by the man's campfire. There were multiple large gashes ripped out of it, both wings and the tail were gone, and it was tipped over at a light angle to the ground.

"See what I mean? So..." He placed the camera back on the ground and turned it to face him, before he leaned back, and wiped his dark brown hair back behind his ear. "Going to take inventory tomorrow..." He sighed, "I'll feel real bad about it - make no mistake about it - but it's life or death, right now... So I can't think of it as looting the dead, but merely taking what I need to survive. My first order of business is to get all of the luggage and put it in a central location. Hopefully I can sort through all of it and get some kind of system going before nightfall tomorrow.

"Any food, water, medicine, power sources, things of that nature, I'm going to separate from the clothes. I think I remember something about planes having emergency transponders, so hopefully I've got GPS satellites looking for me... But I have to prepare for the worst." He explained, "so, after I finish taking inventory, my next order of business will be getting rid of the bodies. I'm in the middle of what I think to be some kind of rainforest, so it's pretty hot and humid, here. I doubt I'd have more than a week before the bodies start smelling, and if I don't do something before then, I'd have to evacuate this area, and forgo the shelter the fuselage provides." He leaned back into the chair and groaned, before he lifted up his arms and inspected them.

"Going to have to check these injuries of mine, too. So far they haven't been bad, but if they go untreated, the little things will stack up quick." Aldric chuckled mirthlessly, his deep voice overwhelming the crackling of the fire. "Who knows? Might've been a surgeon onboard, I'll be able to raid his go-bag. Probably just have to settle for the next best thing... Air marshal. Get his gun, run out of food, start hunting. Thank you... Grandpa Charles - uh." The teen sighed again. "I'll leave it at that, for now. 'Till next time." He leaned forward and his hand covered the camera's lens, before the video cut out.

Aldric never, once, remembered his dreams, though he always knew he had them. The first night after the crash, he knew something was different about the way he slept, in that there had been no dreams whatsoever. He had been so exhausted that his mind hadn't even conjured up phantoms to haunt him with during his unconscious hours. He awoke after six hours of sleep, the sun was just beginning to raise into the sky. The dark-haired teen stretched his sore, aching body, and after a few moments of staring off into space, in the general direction of his long since dead fire, he got to work.

It took him until noon to empty the main passenger's area of all of the luggage. He'd appropriated the drink and concessions carts to help expedite the process, loading them down with luggage and wheeling them all out in bulk before going back for more. After tossing out all the luggage from under the chairs and in the overhead containers, his next, obvious target was the food and water, which he placed in one large pile next to his chair. The medical supplies were easy enough to carry out, unfortunately - only a few first aid kits and a single, smashed AED. He also found a few dozen small bottles of alcohol, which he also placed with the medical supplies. After the medical supplies and the alcohol, he looted everyone for their tech and utilized a few of the emptier bags and suitcases to store all of it in, such that, if it rained, they wouldn't all be destroyed.

Around noon, the increasingly sore teen went back to his chair to retrieve the emergency radio. It turned on without a fuss, and though the interface was largely foreign to him, Aldric had enough common sense to guess his way through it, after some fiddling. He spent a good fifteen minutes, searching the airwaves and polluting them with his voice.

"Mayday, mayday, mayday." He spoke, clearly and calmly, making his voice as deep and his accent as suppressed as possible. "I am a survivor of International Flight six three six. I have crash landed in an unknown location, and will broadcast every day at high noon. If you read me, please respond, I have no method of charging my radio and am in need of medical help." That was good, right?

There were no responses, and after his watch told him a good half hour had passed, he shut the radio off, and got back to work. It was well after five o'clock before he emptied out the belly of the plain of all of the luggage stored inside, and the moon was in the sky by the time he got everything sorted out into general piles of half-organized belongings: Tech, clothes, water, food, medicine, and miscellaneous, like books, soaps, or sewing supplies. He finally called it a night after he downed some of First Class' dried steak, and a glass of orange juice.

The next morning, Aldric dipped into the medical supplies to deal with his injuries. First, he took a few pain pills to deal with his headache and the pains in his chest, before he grabbed what he prayed were the alcohol swaps, and disinfected the areas of him that had been cut open. He wasn't very experienced with bandaging anyone, let alone himself, but common sense went a long way - or at least, he hoped it did - and he had the worst of the worst bandaged up, and counted himself very, very lucky he didn't have to perform any stitches.

After a hearty breakfast of water, pretzels, and a few crushed skittles from his messenger's bag, he began to take inventory and sort everything out.

-For the Record-

"Alright... For the Record, Day... Three." The video picked up as the first one had, with Aldric backing away from the camera after making sure it was stabilized, and collapsing into his increasingly well-worn airline seat. "So..." He picked up a clipboard, and gave the camera a peek and a sly grin, before he tapped it twice with a marker. "That way I don't have to rely on tech." He looked back down and cleared his throat, "thirty two, thirty ounce water bottles... Which goes out to about twenty eight liters. Three dozen cans of various soft drinks and juices... Three dozen salvageable bottles of alcohol -" He peeked back up to the camera, "- uh, jesus, these people drink -" He looked back down, "sixty salvageable bags of various, small airline snacks, including pretzels, peanuts, and other assorted dry goods... Fifteen first class meals of varying types, including chicken, bargain-brand steak, etcetera...

"A cubic ass load of pants, shirts, and socks in my size, and an even bigger number of clothes not in my size -" He looked up again, "- there had to be some kind of pornstar on this plane, by the way. I found this monstrosity, and a few others like it... I figure, if I need a good amount of smoke for a signal fire, I'll light those up." Aldric picked a bra whose cup size was almost as big as his head, and displayed it for the camera. "And no, there weren't any lardballs in there, in case that's the explanation you're thinking up. And yes, actually, Aldric, the rugged survivor, is single. So when I get back home, ladies..." He couldn't keep a straight face, and broke down into laughter, before tossing the bra away.

"Damn it... I rehearsed that one three times. Anyways, four pairs of monstrous bras... A literal bag of condoms, that I actually think came from one of the stewardesses, given where I found it - IF airlines, might wanna start checking these things." He chuckled, "more fuel for a signal fire. Anyways, tech. Got about... Sixteen laptops, two macbooks, a few apple laptops, fifty two cell phones - of which, thirty are of the same brand as mine. Android all the way." He said, giving the camera another sly look, "damn thing survived a plane crash, I don't think I'll ever sell it... And yes... Uh... People who make androids, I am open to bribes, if you want to give me free phones for the rest of my life." He looked back down to his list, the orange light of the fire casting him in a warm glow, and catching the clipboard, drawing his chest into deep shadows.

"Got one and a half dozen tablets, all of which are of similar models to mine, though only half of them have removable storage. Chargers for all of these things, though I have no source of power at the moment, gonna have to work something out, there... One hand-cranked radio, for some reason... A bunch of DVD's I doubt I'll get use out of... A lot of books and flash drives, the latter of which I'm willing to bet has the Bra's casting footage on it." He looked up and pointed past the camera, as if there were people there listening to him. "Ten bucks a pop! Who's interested? Anyone? Ah..." He waved them all away, "anyways...

"Not all of these have removable batteries, but I think I've got enough supplies here to rig up some kind of charger... Kids! Stay in school, take all the science and engineering classes. Joe, fuck your Marching Band, shop class is helping me out. Anyways, got the radio, and maps from the captain's cabin. Our flight path took us out to sea, so I may be on some island, somewhere. Joy..." Aldric groaned, "got a few first aid kits, and various bottles of pills, ranging from actual, literal opiates - including one bottle of oxycodone! There's a goddamn druggy on this plane, guys! - to various allergy and pain meds... Oh! Damn, I almost forgot...

"Haven't found the sky martial, yet, but boy did I find someone just as good." He put down the clipboard and reached to the side of his chair. "So, I dunno what this crazy bastard was hoping to do... Maybe he wasn't going to do anything, but Jesus, this is a big knife." He pulled up a knife, wrapped tightly in a leather sheathe. "The sheathe says Gerber... So I guess it's expensive." He unsheathed the blade and inspected it in front of the camera. "Two serrated edges, a pretty damn sharp point... Fuck, this guy was ready to kill people." He shook his head, and sheathed the blade before setting it down.

"So, here's the deal. If I ration everything out, I can reasonably expect to survive... A month, out here on my own. Maybe a bit longer if I cut back to the bare essentials. But that's not taking into consideration possible medical emergencies, the appearance of other survivors, rain, and things of that nature. So, I should say about two weeks to be safe. Two weeks of supplies before I'm in dire trouble.

"So... After I figure out how I'm going to bury everyone, my first goal will be to get myself first a good place to hunt for food and replenish my water supply. I'm also thinking that the reason the radio isn't working is because of all of the trees around me... So here in a few days I'm going to gear up and try and hike out, find some higher ground and try it there. In a perfect world, it'll work, but just in case it doesn't, that's why I've got all these efforts as a fallback plan... Aaaand a pill-bottle full of oxycodone." He sighed, briefly breaking eye contact with the camera. "I... Really hope I don't have to use that oxycodone.

"But I digress, I'll also be bringing the flare gun with me, just in case I see any planes or helicopters fly by during my hike. So... 'Till then, I need to find, or improvise, a shovel. Because I really don't want to give up the fuselage. It's the biggest, most recognizable thing here, and burning it like a funeral pyre would just be accepting defeat. So... 'Till..." He paused, and looked past the camera a moment, as the sound of the fire filled the camera. "The fuck? Did you hear that?" He turned down to the camera, "sounded like... Twigs, or... No, it was louder than that. Sounded like branches breaking... God, I hope there aren't any bears around here. I don't want to test out my Dicaprio impression." He reached forward and cut off the camera.

I should go to bed... I should go to bed... I should go to bed... God damn it. Aldric knew he heard something, and if it was some kind of wild island-animal, he wouldn't be safe just going to bed with it out there, watching him.

So, Aldric grabbed a nearby, dried branch, and wrapped an unused dress around its end, before setting it ablaze and creating his improvised torch. He held the torch aloft, casting a great ring of bright orange light around him, as he started off in the direction of the noise. He made it to the edge of the clearing the pane had made upon landing, and listened again, focusing past the crackling fires and the distant bugs. After a moment, he heard another few snaps and the sound of feet hitting the ground. He turned around, and froze as his eyes beheld the first living thing he'd seen in days.

An enormous creature that seemed to be made of the night itself, its thick, black fur absorbing all light that touched it and its exoskeletal growths covering its head and extremities. The creature was twice Aldric's size, and at least four times as burly, having the appearance of a wolf mixed with a gorilla. Its eyes glowed a bright, blood red beneath its skull-like mask, and it breathed heavily as it regarded Aldric, and Aldric, it. The two seemed to be at an impasse, neither knowing what to do, yet also clearly not willing to make the first move, at the risk of pissing the other one off.

Just... Uh... I... Um... Thought Aldric, his dark, blue-gray eyes wider than they had ever been in his life, as he beheld the demonic creature. Is... what... It looked familiar, but he knew for a fact he had never, ever seen anything like this before, he would remember something this terrifying - and it was terrifying. One look had Aldric quivering in his boots, and with the way it seemed to absorb the light and steal the warmth of his torch just screamed of evil. The demonic creature just emanated can-not-be with its every breath, and Aldric realized, it was salivating.

It was looking right at him, and salivating.

This fucking thing was hungry.

It was hungry for him!

Chapter 1

There was no urine in his pants.

Aldric stared at the gorilla-sized, wolf-like monstrosity, with its pale white exoskeletal extremities and its light-absorbing fur, his blue-gray eyes wide and locked onto its snout, which was flooded with saliva. This thing had clearly evolved to hunt game much, much larger than it, Aldric wouldn't hesitate to say this creature could take down a rhinoceros, or an elephant.

There was no urine in his pants.

The creature, its bright, blood red eyes locked to Aldric's blue-gray orbs, began growling lowly, as it lurched forward onto its haunches, and then onto its paws. Its muscles bulged thickly underneath the massive mane of black fur, its voice deep and throaty, managing to fill the air and drown out the sounds of fire from both the campfire and the torch. The hungry beast took one tentative step forward, as if testing the crash survivor.

There was now a little urine in his pants.

Okay... Thought Aldric, as he felt his chest tighten and his heart rate skyrocket, adrenaline already starting to leak into his system. This thing is bigger than a bear. I don't think my kickass new knife will do goddamn anything... But the flare gun... He took a slow, tentative step back.

The beast took another step forward.

Going to have to break for it... Need to distract it... Aldric's eyes briefly flickered down to his torch, which glowed a bright, warm orange, its heat warming the arm which held it. Aldric swallowed deeply, and turned his blue-gray eyes back to the wolf-bear. I throw this... I either piss it off, or stun it. The gun is right there in the back pocket on my seat. I just have to pull it out, aim, and fire. He took another step back, to which the wolf-bear took two slow steps forward.

"JESUS!" Deeply roared the teen, reverting fully to his southern accent as he reared his right hand and chucked the torch with all of his strength.

The torch flipped end over and as it flew through the air, casting its light everywhere in a bright display. Aldric turned tail and sprinted as fast as he could, the monster charged forward an instant later. It slammed into the torch, fire-end first, briefly managing to stun itself as the fire burned its eyes and charred its exoskeletal head piece. Aldric yelled in fear as he heard the thing bellow out in rage, its roar sounding like a mixture between that of a wolf's howl and a lion's roar, managing to settle deep into Aldric's chest. The wolf-bear continued its charge, and caught up to Aldric before he'd even made it to the camp fire. The wolf-bear slammed its head into Aldric's back like a bull, sending the dark-haired teen flying several feet through the air, ass over teakettle.

Aldric slammed onto the ground with a loud 'oof' and rolled to a halt just at the edge of his firepit. He felt the ambient heat burning and scrambled away, but when his head snapped back to the wolf-bear, he barely had a second to push himself out of the way of its enourmous, knife-sized claws. He managed to dodge the life-threatening things, but not without injury, as he felt them drag across his right arm and tear a few hunks of flesh off of the side of his ribs. The pain was like nothing he ever felt - like hot fire at the edge of the torn flesh, and cold ice on the nerve endings of the muscles that should have never been exposed to open air. Aldric immediately felt blood start leaking out of his arm and his chest, but his opponent hadn't expected him to dodge at all, let alone so quickly, the result being that it clearly overshot its target and stumbled forward, right into the fire.

Aldric, his eyes tearing up, felt a few embers hit his back and his pants, and patted them off quickly as he watched the creature yell, scream and howl in pain. The crash survivor leapt to his feet and sprinted around the thrashing creature, as it clawed its way out of the fire, sending burning logs and hundreds of small embers in all directions, creating a veritable shower of fire. The bleeding teen reached his chair and shoved his hand into the pocket on the back of the seat, his hand closing around the grip of the flare gun. He ripped it out and flipped around, but was subsequently tackled by the enraged, severely burnt wolf-bear. Aldric felt several of his ribs snap and his wounds tear open wider as he hit the ground and felt the weight of the unearthly creature above him. Barely even conscious through all of the blinding pain flooding his system and overwhelming his endorphins, the dark-haired crash survivor recoiled as the wolf-bear shoved its head right in front of his and roared, as if proclaiming its victory and dominance to the human beneath it, demanding he surrender.

Unfortunately for it, the puny human, however injured he may be, was armed, and therefor, was not defeated.

His ever-increasingly pale arm shook as he gripped the flare gun as tight as he could, and whipped it up, right under the beast's stomach. Knowing better than to shove the barrel of the gun into the beast itself, as that would essentially mean he would get shot with the burning projectile too, Aldric let it hover a few inches beneath the beast as it raised its dark, clawed hand high. He pulled the trigger and the flare buried itself several inches into the beast's stomach, instantly burning and whistling, though the latter was severely muffled and dulled, sounding more like someone blowing their nose as the projectile was surrounded by blood.

The creature reacted instantly, leaping back off of Aldric and howling in pain as its stomach was slowly engulfed in flame. It finally decided now was the time to make its retreat, as it was being burned inside and out. It pounded the ground and tore at it as it sprinted away in a savage, wounded manner, leaving the severely wounded human to collapse, spread-eagled on the ground, breathing heavily as blood poured out of his system and, despite his every instinct telling him to fight it, to get up and try to treat himself, he succumbed to the pain and lost consciousness, his first battle being a resounding draw.

"You've got to be kidding me." Spoke the light-toned voice of the lone male in a trio of fighters, "I do not believe it." He emphasized, as he stared over the edge of the cliff the trio were standing on, peering out into the distance and into the clearing created by the titanic aircraft's crash.

"He survived." Said one of the man's companions, who brushed her pale green hair out of her face, and settled to sit down on the edge of the cliff. "No aura... No real weapons... Clearly no combat experience... It's worth something."

"But I refuse to believe that he'd be the one to survive. There were any number of people in that pocket that would have been better suited than that skinny kid." Said the man, who shook his head, his unkempt, gray hair fraying about back and forth. "You really think he's worth it?" He turned to his left, towards the woman who stood proud and tall at the center of their trio, her long, raven hair falling in thick locks around her shoulders, and her deep red dress reflecting the moonlight above and the pale, distant orange fire light below.

"Regardless if he is or isn't, he is still alive, which locks us out from trying again." The woman said after a few moment's thought, her voice clear and calm, though cold and calculating, as she blankly stared down at the prone, unconscious body of the survivor, despite it barely being the size of an ant given their distance. The woman folded her hands behind her back and lowered her gaze, though her eyes remained locked to the injured survivor. "He made the beowolf retreat. They do not do that... I say we watch them. Observe their game. The beowolf clearly had him beat in strength and speed, but he used his skill and cunning to... Survive." She said, after a moment's consideration and a conciliatory nod of her head. "It may be in our best interest to see how he acts without the awakening of his aura -"

"Yeah, about that - am I crazy, or does that guy's aura feel hotter than the fire the grimm took out? Where did he come from? How does he have so much?" The man interrupted, though he petered out and shrunk away under the fiery gaze of his orange-eyed leader.

"Do not interrupt me again." She said, simply. "It is my belief that he comes from a world in which aura is never untapped. Even here, civilians and non-combatants excise that which they build up in their sleep, and huntsman and huntresses through battle. It is how we never gain an overabundance, and why a huntsman who hasn't fought for years wouldn't have more 'saved up' than one who fought every day. But his people, they do not excise it, it just builds. Even just one year of a slow and gradual buildup with no release would make anything seem vast at first glance, and that boy looks close to two decades old... But I digress." She turned back to looking at the crash sight. "Right now, he plays a game. Two predators, one with tools, one with teeth. The winner of this game shall dictate how we move forward. If he survives, we take him and use him a piece in our game... If he dies, we move on. Go forward as if he had never existed."

He awoke to the feeling of his skin roasting underneath the relentless heat of the sun, and his entire body feeling like he had been thrown around in an industrial-sized drier. His ribs ached and shot jolts of pain through his chest with every breath, the side of his chest and his right arm were almost completely numb, his arm so much so that he could barely even move it. His head felt like it was in a vice grip again, and when Aldric opened his eyes, the light nearly blinded him.

Ow... Shit. Thought the groaning teen. I've got way worse than a damn concussion... I need to wrap my chest up, pray that keeps my ribs from moving too much. He slowly, laboriously leaned up, heavily blinking his eyes as he forced himself to acclimate to the harsh light conditions and his newfound sensitivity to them. He noticed, however, that the world seemed blurrier than it should, all of the details fuzzy.

"Oh... God damn it." Said the survivor, as he pressed his hand against the bridge of his nose. His glasses were, somehow, still there, but the lenses had been smashed to pieces. "Shit..." He ripped the glasses off and threw them to the side, as he pushed himself to his feet.

It took him a quarter of an hour to get all of the medical supplies he needed, and to find a quick first-aid booklet to supplant the content he had on his tablet. With a calming chorus of Johnny Cash playing in the background, Aldric got to work. He peeled his shirt off, wincing in pain as it stuck to his blood-stained torso. The sight of his own body torn the hell open made him freeze for a moment, watching as his very lifeblood literally oozed out of his body. After a moment, he finally clenched his jaw and steeled his resolve, before grabbing a bottle of disinfectant from one of the first aid kits, and liberally applied it to a rag. It took him thirty minutes to dab and disinfect all of his wounds, thirty minutes of sharp, biting pain, anguish, and a lot of suppressed screams. He was likely being watched now, he couldn't make it easy on them by giving them blood to smell and a voice to follow. After all of the gashes on his side were covered in the white, bubbling liquid, he grabbed a needle and thread that he had appropriated from some woman's luggage. Unfortunately, in his haste, the only colors he had grabbed were green, pink, and orange. He stared at the three bundles of thread, his right arm awkwardly lifted above his head and exposing his disinfected wounds to the open air.

He chuckled once, "why the hell not?" What else was he going to use it for? Besides, it would make an interesting story. "So... Why do you have pink stitches?" He said, as he grabbed the bundle and threaded the needle. "Oh... Well, funny story: I thought it would make a funny story." He yelped out in pain as he stabbed at the skin, and began the long and arduous process of stitching himself together. "But..." He gasped, "do you even know how to stitch?" He chuckled faintly, "haven't the freakin' foggiest! Just... Winged it." His breathing grew faster and faster, "how hard could it be?" He asked, as he stabbed again, and pulled the two slabs of skin closer, before repeating the process again, and again, blood oozing out from the wound and the holes made by the needle, making his pinching fingers slip more than once.

"Just pinch..." He pinched, "stab..." He stabbed, "pull..." He pulled, the horrifically odd feeling of something foreign literally being dragged through his body flooding his every sense. "And... Repeat." He gasped, "well damn, you're just a regular Bear Grylls, ain't ya?" He said, stretching his jaw as he tried to ignore the pain, and failed for the most part. "Bitch... Please... I'm... Nathan Drake. Do you know what that SOB has survived?" His voice shook as he spoke, "god fuck, I should be recording this." He muttered, before clearing his throat. "Who the hell's Nathan Drake?" He swallowed, as he finished stitching up one gash, tied the knot, and bit off the iron, blood-tasting string. "Ah, ah gad, you don't know who Nathan Drake is?" He asked, as he repeated the process. "Dude, he's like... Uh... Indiana Jones' badass son! - Who, you mean Mutt - No, that was a stupid fucking movie and you should feel bad for mentioning it." He called out scathingly.

The next ten minutes went along similarly, with Aldric talking to himself as he stitched his side, and then his arm. When all was said and done, he felt as if he were fifty percent thread, and both his arm and side felt very, very stiff. He was certain he had done something wrong, but he had followed the book as closely as he could, now all he could do was wait.

-For the Record-

The video opened up in broad daylight, a severely injured Aldric sitting center-frame, as he tightly wrapped his chest in bandages, which were already growing red from blood. To his right was a bottle of orange juice, and his left, a partially scorched flare gun.

"Got attacked yesterday by... Some kind of big, enormous wolf-bear-thing." He said, groaning with pain as he pulled the bandages tighter, and continued wrapping his torso. "Heh... ManBearPig..." He muttered in an exaggerated tone and a shaky voice, before shaking his head. "I'm starting to wonder if... I mean, it sounds crazy, but there is literally no precedent on earth for an animal like that. God didn't play mix and match with his spare parts but once, and that was the platypus. So... Is it really crazy to think I might be... Somewhere else? But... That's crazy, right? We never went near the Bermuda Triangle, did we? We went south, had a layover somewhere in South America. Damn it, where's Bermuda?" He asked himself, turning his pained gaze from the camera, to off-frame.

"Anyways, it was clearly predatory... I think it evolved to take heavy ass hits - it had some kind of exoskeleton covering bits of its body, and its entire head. I think I'll call it a Cubone." He muttered, tying off the tightly wrapped bandages as he did so. "I dunno how many, but I know it broke a few ribs, and -" He twisted his torso and displayed the bandaged wounds on his side and arm. "- did a number on my outside... But, think of it this way - now my settlement will only get bigger. I've got this BS on tape, I'm not walking away with anything less than five million dollars... And probably an attractive woman on my arms. Ladies like scars, right? Fuck." He sighed, and leaned back in his chair. "This damn chair... Second time it saved my life, now. I think it's magic." He drawled, sarcastically. "Has to be. No other explanation, like, a string of convenient occurrences, or anything like that." The pale-skinned survivor chuckled.

The next five minutes of footage were nothing but him sitting in the chair to the backdrop of the deep, green forest and the plane wreckage. He simply breathed in and out, leaning his head against the headrest on his chair. Eventually, he cursed. "I'm going to have to burn the fuselage." He said, "I am in no way, shape, or form, fit to move all of those corpses anymore. I mean, maybe, I can, if I can repurpose the meal cart and the drink cart into some kind of corpse trolley, but that's a big if." He said, reaching down and grabbing his orange juice. "I have to dedicate to an idea now... Do I move the corpses and try to shore up the fuselage into some kind of... Hut? In so doing, risking opening my wounds back up or possibly disturbing my broken ribs... Or do I loot everything left of value, burn the thing to kingdom come, and take my chances roughing it in the woods, with only makeshift shelters to keep my safe from the Cubone?" He opened up the OJ and took a long, deep swig.

"God, I love orange juice." He muttered. "Okay... So, the fuselage is my best bet for a defensible, sturdy shelter... But there are tons of structural weaknesses in the form of the windows, the two massive holes where the wings used to be, and the whole freakin' tail section is gone. If I dedicate to moving the bodies, I would then too have to dedicate to sealing the place up, and that would take a lot of scrap metal, wood, and other such stuff, and I've only got a knife, not an..." He paused, and with a frown, turned his head back to the plane. "Okay, there may be a fire axe of some sort in there... But that still doesn't preclude the fact that I'm no lumberjack... So if I move the corpses, I'd need to find a place to sleep in there that was safe and moderately hidden from the Cubone...

"So, the overhead carriers, and the captain's cabin. I can stuff myself, and hide in, both of those. The overhead carriers would be less comfortable, but I'd be completely hidden from the wolf-bears. The captain's cabin would be better on a comfort level, but the windshield on the plane was shattered on impact, so a determined, or young, Cubone could get in there - and this is all assuming my injuries don't get infected, and I even find something to seal the fuselage with. I didn't necessarily look for it, but I doubt there's any rope, or bungee cords I could use to bind wood or scrap to the thing. Maybe some cables, and the emergency slide thing..." Aldric finished the orange juice, and tossed away the bottle. "Hm..." He leaned his head back on his magic chair. "I guess it's clear I pretty much have to clear that thing out and fortify it." He added, with a sidewards glance to the camera, and a conspiratorially raised eyebrow. "I mean, the alternative is pulling a Katniss Everdeen and tying myself to a tree every night, and I wouldn't put it past Cubone to climb trees." He sighed, burying his head in his hands and digging his fingers into his thick, unkempt hair.

"Going to have to take a few pain pills... No, not the oxycodone." He added, with a brief, assuring glance upward, before going right back to resting his head in his hand. "I can't help but think Cubone looked familiar, though. Which is odd, because I know I've never seen those things in history or wildlife books, before. Kind of looks like something out of a bad anime, but I digress, I'm not here to figure out the science behind it. I need to heal up, so I can kill it." Still resting on his hand, his head turned to the left of the camera, "I wonder how long all of my batteries will last..." He turned his resting head back to the camera. "Where do airplanes hold their fuel? I know this one's probably out by now, but given that it didn't explode... Who knows? Maybe I can get that freakin' thing to turn on, charge that way." He chuckled mirthlessly.

Another few minutes passed by in silence, the survivor staring off into space, his eyes glossed over in thought. Finally, Aldric lifted his head slowly. "Okay. Gotta move the corpses. As much as I'd rather bury them, it makes more sense to burn them. I apologize for anyone whose religion I'm mucking by doing this, but think of it this way: It wasn't their choice, it was mine. If their god wants to fight about it, I'll explain it to him myself. So... I'm going to try and find the sky marshal while I'm doing this... Pray he wasn't among the folks who flew out of the plane..." He paused. "My dad wasn't in the plane. It's been days." He frowned, but shook his head after a moment.

"'Till next time." He reached forward, and the video cut out.

Aldric popped a few pain killers dry, and after an hour passed, felt them kick in. It was well after noon when he had finally inspected the whole of the airplane. The drink and meal carts were a no-go, he couldn't find any way to disassemble them and change their function, so instead, he bucked up and began the long and arduous process of dragging each and every single individual body out of the airplane. He took them out several meters from the plane and arranged them in neat rows of eight, individually crossing all of their arms and placing their wallet, purse, or other form of identification on their chests, before going back in for another corpse. By the time the sun was setting, he had gotten all of the corpses, and had to undo his bandages three times to redo any of the stitches he had popped. When all was said and done, he had forty rows of eight people each. During his time inside, he had found the flight manifest and the fire axe, but unfortunately, of everyone he searched, there was no sky marshal, so that either meant he was in the tail section, which was unlikely, or he had been ripped out of the plane.

Now standing above a veritable field of corpses, with a knife strapped to his hip and an axe resting on his shoulder, the haggard crash survivor resisted the urge to collapse onto his rear. Instead, he found the nearest, shovel-shaped piece of scrap metal, and bound it to his axe, before he started digging. Given the lack of length on the fire axe's haft, it was a long, arduous, awkward, and painful process that left the crash survivor sore and exhausted by the time he was finished and had a proper mass grave dug out.

The moon would be at its peak when he finished dragging all of the corpses into the grave, and when he set the fire, he made sure he had his camera rolling. As the massive bonfire roasted and burned the bodies inside, cast everything in the immediate vicinity in bright orange light, and filled the air with the putrid scent of burning corpses, the crash survivor began to individually go through each and every single wallet and ID he found during his efforts, read their names, and cross them off of the manifest, all on camera. Each penstroke seemed final, as if confirming once and for all that the person whose name had just been spoken was well and truly dead.

It took him twenty minutes, and a quarter of his battery, to read off all of the names, and when he was finished, there were still four still to be accounted for, including his own. He cut the video after another silent minute of the funeral pyre, but made sure to also take a picture of it as well, for documentation purposes. After he ensured the fire wouldn't spread if he left it alone, Aldric turned tail and made for his magic chair, which he picked up and hauled into the fuselage. Certainly, he knew that the first class seats would likely be better and more comfortable, to say nothing of being able to recline farther, but the first class seats hadn't been instrumental in saving his life, twice.

Dragging the chair behind him, Aldric clambered into the airplane. It was much, much emptier now, with all of the corpses and luggage removed. There was an air of stillness, as if, by individually dragging all of the death out of it, he had made it such that the life could not get back in. There was no white noise, no sound of the wind blowing, and even the noise of the outside sounded distant, muffled and silent. He didn't hear any of the insects, the fire sounded distant, it was as if there was a bubble around the fuselage, everything inside sounded silent.

Aldric ran his hand through his hair, and dragged his chair through the plane, into the pilot's cabin. He shut the door and locked it tight, before he turned around and sat on the chair. He laid the axe across his lap, and rested his right hand on the grip of his knife, before he leaned his head back against the chair and drifted to sleep.

-For the Record-

The video opened up with a shaky shot of Aldric's face, the camera bobbing up and down as the sound of feet stepping on metal. "Day... Er... Four, or five. Day five. So, this morning I decided to try and step up on the airplane to try and get a better signal, and..." He turned the camera around, revealing a sweeping shot of the treetops surrounding the crash sight, and as he raised it, way off in the distance, a stone structure came into view. Due to the extreme distance, it looked small, but it was clearly man-made and not some convenient natural occurrence. "You see that? That's got to be some kind of... I hesitate to say 'castle', but it's some kind of stone structure, and if I can see that thing from here, it's gotta be big. Like, castle big. And if that's there, that means that people lived here at some point, if they aren't still." He said, before he set down the camera, and walked onto frame, his dark clothing billowing in a light breeze, and the stone structure still barely visible to his left.

"And I say 'at some point', because if they were... Say, some kind of indigenous tribal culture, they would have seen this crash and they would have come to investigate days ago. But what I'm thinking, is that if I'm going to get a signal on this thing -" He pulled out the radio, "- it's going to be there." He indicated behind him with his thumb. "It's close enough that I can trek back and forth, it's tall enough that I might be able to get a signal without having to fight these mountains and plateaus. The problem, is Cubone. He took yesterday off, but I am not going to make the mistake of thinking that thing is dead, so if I make this trek, there's going to be some kind of confrontation between me and it. It'll hunt me, and I'm no hunter... So... If I want to get there, I first have to find a way to kill the Cubone, so I can move on in relative safety.

"Buuuut where there's one of those things, there's got to be more than one, and I don't know if they have a pack mentality and will come back with fifty of them, or if they're like bears and they just do their own thing on their own time. All I do know is that I pissed that thing off, it is still alive, and it's going to try and kill me." He sat down cross-legged, "but I'm kind of in a catch twenty-two at the moment. I'm nowhere near good enough to go full Schwarzenegger and start booby-trapping the forest to kingdom come. So if I want to get to the castle, I'll have to kill it. But if I want to kill it, I need to fight it on neutral grounds - ala, the fucking castle." He leaned back on his bandaged arms, wincing slightly before he put more pressure on his uninjured hand. "And I'm all kinds of hurt and dead, at the moment. So my best bet would be to trap that thing first, and then just stab the hell out of it from a safe position. Maybe drop on it with my axe." He looked over the edge of the plane.

"I've only got two flares left, and there wasn't a sky martial on the plane, so I don't have a gun... Okay, what I need is a weapon, and that means I've got to prepare. I've got a knife and an axe, and I can salvage some cables or some rope from the plane if I want to try and make a bow. Some spears might be good too, but probably just for defensive purposes. I digress." The dark-haired survivor turned on his rear, and pointed out to the stone structure. "That's my new goal. I'll leave a note here, next to the magic chair and the manifest, just in case a rescue team shows up.

"'Till next time."

Alright... First order of business, find some kind of something I can use as a bow. Thought the survivor, after having swallowed down another two pain pills, and walked out into the surrounding forest, knife strapped to his belt, flare gun in the back of his pants, and axe held in one hand, resting on his shoulder. Need a C-shaped, or at least moderately curved, branch of some sort... He listed off, as he gazed around the beautiful forestry surrounding him. There aren't any damn animals around here... He hadn't seen nor heard a single bird, squirrel, or any kind of animal since the first wolf-bear, and though the lack of wildlife unnerved him, he shook it off and continued trekking through the dense woods.

Though his chest ached, a combination of time, his bandages, and the pain pills were helping him to get used to the problem. What concerned him, however, was his arm, which was essentially useless to him until his wounds had healed enough for him to regain a wider range of motion. His feet too were becoming a problem - the constant, ceaseless walking everywhere was taking its toll, he was going to have to check through the shoes and boots he'd looted to see if any were his size. The axe weighed down on his shoulder as he walked through the woods, every so often taking out his knife and marking his path with an 'X' on a tree, large and deep enough for it to be unmistakably man-made.

Man... I'm screwed. Thought the survivor, with a brief chuckle. Seventeen years, only ever been in two fights, and the closest to a survival situation I've ever come to was camping with Dad, and that lasted for all of two days and there was a freakin' supermarket not two miles away, and here I am just improvising my way through goddamn everything it takes to survive, praying I don't miss something, or screw something else up. I mean, even if I kill Cubone and decide to use him as a food source, I've got to skin him - which I've never done - gut him - which I wouldn't even know how to do - and do god knows what else.

Is it all animals, or just fish that you have to take the skeletons out of? Do I have to cut out its brain, too? And what about its bladder, how do I get that out without covering its innards in piss? And even more importantly, how do I know how far down to cut so I can skin the damn thing? And what do I even eat in the first place? Do I eat its muscles, or just its skin? Then how do I not take off too much skin? What's the protocol, here? Do I keep the fur? How do I do that without covering myself in its rotten flesh? How does this work? The dark-haired crash survivor shook his head, noting with a slight amount of annoyance that his sweat-slick hair whipped back and forth, hitting him in the cheeks and obscuring his eyes. He brushed his hair back, and made a mental note to go back to the plane and look for a rubber band to tie it back.

He continued trekking slowly through the forest, marking his path and checking the various branches and sticks for ones that would make good arrows, spears, or bows. By the time the sun was high in the sky, he had gotten quite a collection shoved into his backpack, including one long branch that he was now unashamedly using as a walking stick. After a while, he started walking the path he had forged back to his camp, which had remained just as he had left it, though the time away from it had been enough such that he had grown used to the smell of nature, as opposed to the acrid scent of burnt corpses, which still filled the air and made his stomach churn. He dropped his pack of potential bows and arrows next to his pile of supplies, and checked on the smoldering funeral pyre. Most of the corpses were now disintegrated into ash, though some were still black and ashen, waiting to crumble.

Aldric sighed, making a mental note to set another fire later tonight. The dark-haired survivor turned around and went to the plane, where he found a few rubber bands, which he instantly used to bind his unkempt hair, and several long, thick cables and elastic bands long enough to function as a string on a bow. It was during this time that he noticed multiple flies buzzing about, and then he smacked himself in the face when he recalled years of watching television: Wash the blood off, or it will attract flies. So, he spent the time before carving his arrows and testing bows changing his bandages, cleaning his wounds, and also scrubbing off the dried blood from his side and his arm. It somehow hurt more now than it had when he'd stitched himself up, though the wounds weren't swelling up, which the blue-gray eyed survivor hoped was a good sign.

With the moon raising up in the sky and a fresh set of bandages binding his chest and covering his arm, the survivor felt safe enough to go shirtless for the remainder of the day, after he set fire again to the funeral pyre, and sat down a few meters away from it in his magical airplane chair. Half of all of the branches he'd chosen as bows didn't survive the first few tests after he'd bound their top and bottom with the cables and tried test-firing a few of the unsharpened arrows. A quarter of the 'good ones' were too elastic, and simply bent too much when he tested the tension of the tables. When he was down to two long branches left, the rest having been tossed in the fire, he was getting worried, but fortunately for him, the final one was good enough: Pliable and durable enough to not snap under pressure, but also strong enough to resist being bent by his cable.

Now with a tentative bow, Aldric set up his camera and got to work whittling his arrows with the Gerber.

-For the Record-

The video opened up with the sight of the survivor sitting in his chair, a pile of sticks on one side of him, and a clearly improvised bow leaned up against it. One half of him was cast in bright orange light by a fire off-screen, and the other half was set in deep shadow.

"So, day five, still. I've been thinking about this trip. I only popped one stitch today, and that was just doing some walking about. It's obviously not safe to try and do a multi-day thing, walk a few hours, sleep, repeat, due to Cubone's omnipresence... But I'm also not in any current state to do any intense, long-distance slash low-time hiking." He lifted up one of his legs and tapped on his calf, "legs aren't used to it. My calves are starting to swell up a bit. So the question is, how do I cross a long distance, in little time, without a major strain on my body and my injuries? If I had a mountain bike, this would be a non-issue, despite my inexperience." He drawled on, whittling away at the sticks with his large knife, making sharp, pointed ends.

"And as cool as it would be, there are a plethora of problems preventing my from trying to turn the plane on and just smash my way over there, not the least of which being my lack of a pilot's license." He pointed at the camera with his knife, "the settlement's final value is only going up, IF Airlines. In addition to my five million, I'll want a car, and some kind of golden ticket so I never have to pay for airline tickets ever again." He paused, before he tapped on the headrest of his chair. "And this chair. I love this chair. I want this specific chair." He added, with a large grin and a light chuckle.

"Anyways...So far as I can tell, unless something wants to drop the hell out of the sky, I think my only option is to just hoof it. So... Once I've got these arrows done, and I've gotten at least halfway decent with shooting and aiming this thing, I'll pack some water, food, and ammo, and start the hike early in the morning. Maybe, seven or eight hours after dark." He said, as he inspected his arrow. "And I'm not even sure these arrows will be effective against it... So assume a moment that my only effective weapons are the professionally made ones. My knife, and my axe. I think of the two, the axe may be the most effective." Said the survivor, tossing the newly made arrow to his right, and picking up a new one before he began carving it.

"See, I paid attention in history class. Swords may be more known, but the axes had an advantage in weight. You get that thing swinging, and all of the weight is on one end, meaning when it hits, all of that weight, all of that speed, all of it is focused on the hunk of metal at the end of the fulcrum - the haft. The result is a weapon that could pierce plate armor just as easily as it could pierce leather or anything else. Better yet? You break it? It doesn't just shatter into a million pieces - it still functions as an effective bludgeon." He explained, "now, I'll go ahead and admit, I was a part of the katana crowd until I was fifteen, before I did my homework and decided regular ol' longswords were better. And while I may be a bigger fan of swords, I know when and where to admit defeat, and this thing, it's when and where. Best part is that it's got the axe side, and the pick-head, so it serves a double function.

"So, point is, if this bow doesn't work, I've still got the axe. And if that doesn't work, I'll probably not be long for this world, but I'll still have the knife, too, and that has the advantage in speed." He pointed the half-finished arrow at the camera, "hear that, Cubone? You might bigger than me, but by god, I'm craftier. I will not lose this fight, I will get to that castle back there... And come hell or high water, Aldric's going home.

"'Till next time." He reached forward and switched off the camera.